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Manufacturer Supposedly Scales Up Drone to Autonomously Carry Humans

It's Uber with no driver, and up in the air. It's also totally suspicious

By Rain Noe - January 20, 2016

in Cars | Tech

Whenever people say we'll one day upload our consciousnesses into the cloud, I point out that I can't even get my podcasts to sync. Although my consciousness is probably not more than a gig or two, I have little faith such a data transfer would go off without a hitch.

I have little faith in technology in general. So this new, highly technology-based form of transportation proposed by a company called Ehang scares the living crap out of me:

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Look, I get that English is a second language for the company and the narrator, but they couldn't spend a couple bucks to run a grammar check on the copy? And we're supposed to believe these folks are detail-oriented enough to create a perfectly safe autonomous Uber drone? Yeah, I'm not buying it. And what's with the guy having to climb into the vehicle backwards, then turn around? Not exactly human-centered design.

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Beyond that it's the reliance on tech that scares me. What happens when the tablet crashes, or if one of those eight motors goes out?

Fun for programmers: Alter the code so that immediately after takeoff, two of the propellors on the display begin furiously flashing red while a klaxon sounds

In the video the narrator keeps hitting the safety point, including that motivated-to-be-safe origin story that I don't quite buy, but not a single specific safety feature is mentioned--not even collision avoidance or bird detection.

The video closes with the tagline "Once we begin, we will never give up." I dunno, people give up all the time. But you know what never gives "up," literally? Gravity.

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Brad Comis

8 years ago

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Looks to me like this thing has either 4 or 8 motors on it, if it has 8 motors then you've got lots of back-up motors. Even if there is only 4 motors I do think a quadcopter can fly with only 3 motors, but it will obviously be in "limp mode." As a radio control hobbyist it is pretty interesting to see the RC hobby roots of this project and the influences that show in the design of this machine. Exciting to see people experimenting!

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Ricardo Pineda

8 years ago

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With all due respect Rain Noe, it may not take long for guys like these to get proper funding and more convincing videos. Consider this, autonomous driving was hacked in very little time recently... but that the video/demo/clip of it was very convincing had nothing to do with the actual tech. Or consider how much VW invests in media and how that has anything to do with the recent scandal. For me, even a good video is no guarantee but I praise the small taking a big shot.

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